Alan Murray, The Wealth of Choices.

• Author: Dornbusch, Rudi

Alan Murray, The Wealth of Choices Crown Publishers, 2000.

Your Ticket to the New Economy

Alan Murray is no modest man: His title and his perspective borrow from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Friedman's Free To Choose. Not a low risk-strategy, but he pulls it off, explaining what makes the New Economy function as effectively as Adam, Milton, and Rose describe their work.

This is not a book about money grabbing or getting rich quick; it is more a plea and a convincing demonstration that the new economy is real and offers a formidable opportunity. There is a joke about a man who prays to God, day after day, hoping to win the lottery. On and on he prays to please, please win the lottery. One day, the heavens open up and amid thunder and lightening, a voice is heard: "For heaven's sake, why don't you just buy a ticket?" Murray's is that voice, so get your ticket.

The book pursues two tracks: One shows how deregulation and information technology have vastly enriched the choices available. The second track explores, in a down-to-earth fashion, the range of these choices. The book fully accomplishes its mission to convince anyone that yes, there is a new economy and, by Jove, I can't believe that I haven't been more active getting my share of it. No apologies in this book for the new economy -- if it hasn't worked for you, blame yourself for not taking advantage.

America's super boom has given the New Economy a good name: full employment, budget surpluses, rising real wages, moderate inflation, more millionaires and billionaires by the day -- who could possibly complain? But what accounts for the stunning performance? No sermon diatribe about rules of the game, property fights, free markets -- the standard diatribe of old economy conservatives -- will easily capture the formidable dynamics that have been unlocked in America in the past two decades. The Left used to harp about neo-liberalism and free market economics, but it is destabilized by what has happened, has yet to discover a counter ideology, and hence is lying low. It is easy to attack neo-liberalism. It's another thing to cry foul about the new economy, where corporations start in the garage or the attic, and are organized around stock options rather than "exploitation." Just like the routed Left, the flourishing literature on globalization (Turbocharged Capitalism, The Lexus and the Olive Tree) is not managing to deal with what is going on. It is awed by the breakdown...